


Eq at EU

by Runwildwithme (NectarinesAndSourThings)



Series: Tales from the Else [7]
Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: ...can i add dimensional fuckery as a tag?, Appaloosa's backstory, EU's Equestrian Team., Equestrian, Faeries - Freeform, Gen, Horseback Riding, I guess???, I'm as much along for the ride as you guys are, Monologue, POV First Person, Stolen away, The Sight, as promised!!, dimensional fuckery, fae, i feel like that's a good tag for elsewhere., making friends with the folks who take contract law, never have i written in so many styles/from so many POVS as I have since EU got ahold of me., that feel when your plan for acquiring gainful employment hinges on going Underhill, what's that? EU doesn't have an Eq Team? this EU sure does!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NectarinesAndSourThings/pseuds/Runwildwithme
Summary: Most horse folk - the good ones, anyway - have a quiet sort of stillness about them, a watchfulness. Comes from being around horses so long, knowing that they're reading your body language, taking cues from you. You learn to pay attention to the world a little like they do, just to know what's going through their heads.At Elsewhere University- one of the Elsewheres, anyway - developing that sort of awareness can sometimes have... side effects. Which is, lets be honest, not nearly enough of a deterrent for the kind of people who persist on riding and showing horses even at a place like Elsewhere.No, not really a deterrent at all.





	Eq at EU

**Author's Note:**

> Well, as promised, Appaloosa's backstory!! A bit, anyway. This is... let's call it her most likely past. I'm not sure if Appaloosa is actually dead, in Feathers, but I do know that that's just one of her possible future. 
> 
> ....I've got Schrodinger's Appaloosa, guys.
> 
> Also: I'm so glad she left enough of an impact that some of you were eager to here more about her!! After this, I may have a very silly one shot about Muffins and Not-Jenna interacting in some nebulous pre-events-of-Feathers timeline. It is very silly, has absolutely no redeeming value, and I love it to bits. 
> 
> But enough of that!! You came here for Appaloosa. :D

All the girls on the Eq Team at EU go by names taken from equine coloration and markings. There a senior that's called Snip, another called Socks, four different Roans: Red, Blue, Strawberry, and Sorrel,  a Star, a Stripe, a couple of Duns, a few more Palominos. I go by Appaloosa, and I'm the seventh girl over a period of seven graduating classes to hold the name. 

 

No power in that, not like there would be with the whole ‘seventh daughter of a seventh daughter’ thing, but it's apparently still impressive that I've been able to establish myself as the  _ only  _ Appaloosa on the team. 

 

Most of us have other nicknames, for outside the show ring and stables (one of the Roans, for instance, has a different name for each club she's in, and yet another for her dorm mates) and refuse to speak of our other nicknames as if they were our true ones so long as we're at the stables. 

 

It's an extra layer of protection, yeah? ‘Cause like. We're athletes- we're on display, and we  _ compete.  _ And not just with other teams. We're friendly about it, and we call ourselves a team, but we're competing against each other just as much as everyone else whenever we go to shows, and especially when we  _ host _ shows. We just don't have the same sort of bond other EU sports teams do- we support each other, of course, but when it's down to brass tacks we're all hoping for each other's failure. That sort of thing is apparently  _ understandable  _ to the Gentry. An extra layer of protection doesn't go amiss, yeah?

 

The very nature of our competition invites viewing, invites an audience- we're not just judged on how well we do something, but how prettily, how elegantly, how surreptitious we can make our movements. And our sport is  _ old _ , our habits reminiscent of when our sport was for  _ war _ \- we tack up and mount from the left because that's how it used to be done, to leave room for a sword on the left hip. 

 

...which is present, more often than not, at least when we ride at Elsewhere and not at shows at other venues. It really shouldn't surprise as many people as it does how many girls from the Eq team take the swordsmanship classes EU offers. 

 

So like. We're attractive to our good neighbors, yeah? We're all at least  _ passingly _ familiar with the care of horses- Coach makes sure of that- and their tack, most of us have a blade and are trained to use it, we're athletic and fit and used to moving with a certain rolling grace from the saddle and sword, and then to top it off we go and invite Attention regularly. 

 

We get taken a lot, yeah? But see, the thing is that we EU Eq girls are  _ useful _ . When we're taken, it's not because we're pretty or because we slipped up and said thank you, or for our voices or our art. We get taken because we know horses and the managing of them, and we hardly ever need the RA’s to come get us, except for when they need the paperwork signed. 

 

There's a whole passel of young women who have disappeared from the show circuits to ‘focus on their studies’, you see, and by that I mean they're Underhill, managing the stables of various landed Gentry of the Courts and being paid  _ damned  _ handsomely for it. 

 

So like. There's a reason we react a bit differently from the rest of the Involved students when we hear one of our’s has been taken. For most of the campus, being taken is a tragedy, or a test, or a trauma, or a quest, or something that maybe ended well but was by no means  _ easy _ .  For us, more often than not, being taken is a chance to  _ network _ . 

 

Snip, in particular, is fucking  _ legendary _ . She’s Underhill more than she’s over, these days, and fielding employment offers left and right (she’s taken just about all the husbandry and veterinary classes she can without being pre-med), and so of course she’s got all sorts of stories. She nearly died for her best story, but what a story it  _ is _ .

 

Snip got run down by the Wild Hunt last year, you see, and as the Lord was dismounting to finish her off she managed to bargain for her life in exchange for figuring out why his horse was lame on the back left hoof. The way she tells it, he made the  _ most hilarious  _ sucked-lemon face when she pointed it out, but he agreed. She led him straight back to the stables, hooked his horse in the cross-ties, pulled the tack off his horse. 

 

She thought she'd have to go shanghai one of the vet students and maybe sneak a horse into one of the med lab buildings to get an MRI or something ridiculous like that -like I said, Snip is legendary, and for more reason than her brush with the Hunt- but by the time she was done rubbing down his horse she'd found the problem. The horse had picked up a decently sized piece of rock right in the frog, and was perfectly fine once she pried it out. She fucking talked her way out of being  _ straight up murdered _ because of a  _ pebble.  _

 

Let me tell you, there's gonna be some kind of war Underhill to decide who gets Snip when she decides she's ready to go manage a stable over there. 

 

I've been taken... oh, probably around thirty or so times now? It's not actually that often- one of the Palominos gets disappeared like twice a week these days, and I swear the only reason the Blue Roan isn't failing her classes is because she worked it out with her professors so she's allowed to turn in hand-written papers. She’s taken to carrying her assignments with her  _ everywhere:  _ she even had a saddlebag specially made to fit her notebooks. 

 

But yeah, I've been taken enough times to have a few repeat ... _ customers _ is as good a word as any- there's a Lady from the Summer Court who has a stable forty horses strong, an underfae who only has three but keeps them in fantastic condition, a young Lord from the Winter Court who inherited a whole herd of mostly-wild horses he's trying -and mostly failing, he needs to be more consistent- to train into something rideable, amongst a few others. 

 

So yeah. We're useful, and we generally endeavor to make ourselves  _ more _ useful- first aid and animal husbandry and hotel management, swordsmanship, conflict resolution, they all translate  _ extremely _ well, let me tell you, as does a friend in contract law- because we know that there's a good chance we'll get a job out of it. 

 

And that's to say nothing of the whole thing with the Sight. 

 

Listen. This.. doesn't get talked about a lot, and for  _ good fucken reason _ , but thing with us equestrians is that we develop a certain sort of ... _ awareness _ , when we're around horses. 

 

Look. We humans, we stare and act and move like predators. Horses are prey animals, ok? Yeah, they're social, and yeah, they've been domesticated for ages, but they're not dogs. A horse won't go ‘oh hey, my person is here and we're both at home, cool, relaxation time’. Horses are constantly at least a little on edge, ready for something to jump out and try to kill and eat them, because- evolutionarily speaking- that’s how horses stuck around through the ages.  They actual-facts  _ do not sleep _ . 

 

I once rode a horse who wouldn't go near the mounting block because it had been moved five feet over from its normal position. Stripe always talks about one of the mares she learned to ride on- if someone walked up to her while wearing sunglasses, the mare would _freak out._ She was totally fine as soon as they took them off, though. Didn't care if they were holding them, only if they were on the face. The Sorrel Roan has a friend in her home town whose horse _hates_ yellow flowers. Just the yellow ones. My current horse is _convinced_ that the bush in the corner or the arena wants to murder him. It’s just a normal bush- and believe me, we checked.  

 

The point is, horses are twitchy, nervous things convinced they live in a horror-movie world. So if we want to be in control, be  _ safe _ , we have to be aware of everything our horses are  _ before  _ they notice it. So sometimes- not always, and not frequently, but  _ sometimes-  _ if a rider has a  _ really _ good sense of situational awareness, she might start to .. _ notice _ things. 

 

As long as it only happens when you're in the show ring, that's fine, nothing to worry about- the Fair Folk who show up come to watch, and that invites being watched  _ back _ by their very own rules. Your horse might be a little jumpier for a while until you get used to the new sights, but that's easy enough to handle. You don't even need to pretend not to see them- even eye contact, while not strictly speaking  _ wise _ , isn't dangerous. If you notice one of them in particular showing up to more than a few of your shows, a wave wouldn't go amiss. 

 

Even if you start seeing things when you're just in practice, well, you're still in an arena, they're still there to watch. Maybe don't acknowledge them too blatantly, but like I said- by their own rules, watching invites being watched back. 

 

It's only when you're out of the arena fencing, when you're out of the saddle, when you're gait isn't accompanied by the jingle-jangle-jingle of your spurs that you should worry. That's when we all start passing around advice. 

 

_ Keep your head down, your face blank. Maybe invest in a pair of large sunglasses to hide you expressions.  _

 

_ Take some time off, if you can. Go be somewhere, do something that you don't have be hyperaware.  _

 

_ Re-learn how to focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.  _

 

_ Walk everywhere with your headphones in, until you stop straining to hear past the beat.  _

 

The thing is, though, is that these are stop-gap measures. Even a two-week break is enough to atrophy muscles, ruin progress, and we've all stuck with riding even at  _ Elsewhere _ : not even wild horses could tear us away, pun absolutely intended. 

 

So the last piece of advice that gets given is to  _ network like crazy _ , until you're ready to graduate. Until you have your undergrad. 

 

Until you're ready to go Underhill. 

 

Which. Well. It's a good thing I’ve already got options, now isn't it, because I just Saw the Lady from the Summer Court strolling through the middle of the east quad on my way to my Bio class. She even waved. 

 

Time to go make myself useful to that pretty law student who's planning to specialize in contracts. 


End file.
